Monday, April 06, 2015

Freeman Dyson: It would be crazy to try to reduce CO2

3:20: "First of all there is man-made climate change ...it's a question of how much and is it good or bad..we don't understand the details. It's probably much less than is generally claimed. The most important thing is that there are huge non-climate effects of carbon dioxide which are overwhelmingly favorable which are not taken into account. To me that's the main issue--the Earth is actually growing greener..it's increasingly agricultural yields, it's increasing forests, it's increasing all kinds of growth... That's more important and more certain than the effects on climate.

5:20: CO2 is "enormously beneficial both to food production and also to biodiversity, preservation of species and everything else that's good. The remarkable thing is that these effects which have nothing to do with climate...are so much easier to measure than the effects on climate and so much more certain"

9:15: [On warmists] "There certainly is an enormous religion in which there are lots of true believers who think that climate change is evil and that we're going to run into big catastrophes if we don't do something drastic. That's a sort of belief system which exists...I don't understand it and I don't pretend to understand their motives."

11:00: "The real world is far more complicated than the models...I don't think any of these models can ever be predictive"

13:45 On sun's effect on climate: "The correlation is certainly there. Exactly how the activity of the sun influences the climate is not completely clear. Something to do with cosmic rays...probably an effect on clouds"

15:15 "CO2 is so beneficial in other ways, it would be crazy to try to reduce it"

16:40: "Average temperature of the Earth..is a very poorly defined thing anyway"

18:50: "Carbon dioxide will increase. We will continue to burn oil and coal; probably it does us good. The Earth will get greener as a result"

19:30: "[People from Asia] don't feel pessimistic at all...This sort of mood of doom and gloom...only is particularly in the academic communities, particularly in the western societies...The media have gone alone with it, but I think the general public has a lot more common sense."

20:20: Dyson brought along Lomborg's book "Cool It". Dyson says "I think it's the best general summary I've seen, in a way...I think he's very sound"

21:45: "Man-made climate change certainly is real..question is how much and whether it's good or bad...I would say it's on the whole good..it's not as large an effect as most people have imagined".

22:00: "I'm an optimist...Everything I look at has improved compared to the 1930s"

What would Mr Dyson say about the biodiversity impacts from the extraction, refinement and transport of oil, gas and coal? Think of less particulate matter, ocean and freshwater oil spills, mountaintop removal, water used for fracking and cooling. These are the co-benefits of a shift away from fossil fuels.